Devlog #57: February 2026

Lore & Art

By Maja - CEO, Concept Artist

Lore for Eldheim

I’ve been continuing the story of Eldheim and some of its locations together with Marius. Of course, with all this lore we have done a lot of research so that our fiction has grasps and traits of the story of Norway. But of course, not one to one. I’ve been talking with people who have studied history and taught history, and that gave some great tips and pointers for what we needed. We make sure that the story fits the map and the location too.

Parts of the lore are the NPCs, and most of them have their stories already written, but it’s never too late to revisit these stories, do adjustments or expand on some parts. Personalities have also been more defined for the NPC’s.

The joy of art

I’ve here and there continued on the “painting” for the stable that I shared at the WIP of the last month. It’s such a joy to draw this and it’s coming along fine! I am at the stage of putting details and definition of the horse. I am having a blast when drawing this. Hopefully it will turn out well. Below is a zoomed in WIP.

Stable Update

By Tirna - Project Manager, 3D-artist

Adjusting proportions

The stable has been through a few adjustments lately. We want a massive sturdy stable, but it was a little too much, so everything went through some scaling and other adjustments. Even though everything has been scaled down, the stalls are still larger than what you usually see here in Norway and many other parts of the world. There is still some work to do on the windows and doors, regarding scaling.

The horse in this picture is 1.70m - so a quite large horse. The paddocks currently look small, so we are figuring out what to do with them. The main goal isn’t that the horses will be in the small paddocks and their stalls. We have planned larger pastures where the horses can roam.

Hallway

The hallway have gotten a smaller upgrade, with benches and a better ceiling. The stone wall behind them will get a proper texture when all the modelling is done.

And there is small differences as well in the main hall (entrance).

Steam post imageThe first floor of the main hall has been made smaller to make the outside look like a "Stabbur".

In order to make that work, some walls had to move some walls, where it’s the most visible is the little opening where you can look into the stalls, from the main hall. So right now, it looks like this.

Steam post image Exterior of the stable

So there have been some huge changes to the outside of the stable as well. Some of you might recognize the details from another model, a few years back, called the horse market. We decided to reuse some parts of it to create a more epic Nordic look to the stable. We have also decided that the stable won't be red after all, but the old barn at the property will stay red.

Steam post imageSteam post imageSteam post image

On the back side of the stable, there will be a little bridge where you can enter the hayloft

The stable is looking more and more like a Norwegian fairytale stable. We hope you will like it as much as we do. And we can’t wait until it’s done and placed on the property.

The Friesian

By Mathilde - Community Manager, 3D-artist

This month, I've been continuing my work on the Friesian horse model. The high poly sculpting Was mainly to get in the shapes of the muscles, bigger details, and some smaller details such as the eye and mouth area.

Once the sculpt was completed, I lowered the resolution and uploaded it to Blender to make sure it would still fit the low poly mesh that we use for all of the breeds. Since I had already changed the shape of the low poly mesh to fit the Friesian before I started the sculpt, I mainly just had to reshape the low poly mesh a tiny bit to account for some of the changes I had done while sculpting on the high poly mesh. This was to make sure the low poly and the high poly meshes would match as closely as possible in order to get a good bake. This is where we mirror the details on the high poly mesh onto the low poly mesh, making the low poly mesh appear to have the same (or close) amount of details as the high poly mesh. Below, you can see the low poly mesh with the high poly mesh successfully rendered on top of it. I also added more details to account for some that got lost when baking, but added parts such as veins and skin textures as well.

Finally, I could import the exported texture maps into Blender and have a look at what the result of the Friesian horse will be. I also started a small test of feathers on the fetlock/leg. This is still in trial and needs more testing, but it is definitely going somewhere!

Map, Planning, and Zoning

By Marius - Animator

After last month's computer problems I have slowly but surely continued to set up my pc again after formatting it, as my backups from the formatting still bog down my other drives somewhat. But in the meanwhile I have been working on other stuff that isn’t as heavy for the computer, I have for once worked in 2D! Which has been a really fun change of pace for me. When not working on other things, I have been working on a more definite and planned map for how Eldheim could be laid out and worked on. And while it hasn’t been fully set in stone it has helped a lot in brainstorming world ideas.

The geography

For the geography we have already researched and talked about real places to take inspiration from, as that would help a lot in making the topography look natural. We had all agreed earlier of a place that looked great and could be a source of inspiration, so I found it on the map and screenshot the topology of the area. Afterwards I removed any signage and roads from the map by hand so that we could be more free to design the layout; as while we want to draw inspiration from the area's nature, we don’t want to make the place one to one.

In the phase after that I looked at the topology to try and chart out what would be the most natural playable areas. While it got updated the more I worked on it, the main idea was that I want there to be natural borders to the map and avoid invisible walls if possible. While invisible walls might be needed depending on how things go, I do want to avoid them unless necessarily. Because of this Eldheim will most likely be steeper than the area we used as reference, both to give a natural world limit, but also to section off areas.

Above is the first iteration of possible playable areas.

Areas

To not overwhelm ourselves with designing the whole potential world at the same time I started sectioning off pieces of potential playable areas where it looked to be most natural. Mostly to have areas we will develop one at a time so that we can focus on the areas that are most important, but also in the worst case scenario that it actually is too much world to develop, that we have not used time to do detailed work on areas that get scrapped. Lastly the areas work as a good first pass on what goes where.

As an example we would most likely start with the home stables and then Eldheim. Then afterwards maybe start with Zone 2 when we are satisfied with Home and Eldheim, then maybe Zone 4 and so on.

Above: sneak peak on zoning

I will probably make a Patreon post of the full process when I am finished so as to not make the devlog too long and to have more details to write about in depth. But I will spoil that I have worked with for example nature and road placements.

Testing & improving

By Ouroboros - Programmer

I have continued working on the character controller and the camera, with several builds being made for testing. We first tested a build ourselves to iron out some bugs and make sure everything worked. After releasing an updated build in test on itch, we followed up by hosting test events where Marius and I tested the build along with our testers. We had a great time chatting with everyone, and we were able to find both bugs and things to improve. I spent the time between the test events on fixing what I could and making new builds. The main takeaway from the testing is that the camera still needs some work. On the bright side, the memory usage was very stable, and the new multiplayer code worked great.

With the testing done for this time, I have worked on implementing the last few components of the character controller and improving the camera. I have also spent time doing research and learning what I need for the next step of the optimizations. I’m going to start enabling more and more systems. It will be important to keep a close eye on the performance as this is done, making sure there aren’t any unexpected bottlenecks. After the character controller and camera, the main focus will be audio, UI, and inverse kinematics. We need the UI fully up and running before we can enable systems like the inventory and interactions. This is also as good a time as any to look over and re-enable the code for the audio. The inverse kinematics are more to further build on the character controller, as well as being a test for having more IK for the horses.

Overall, the testing went pretty well, and it feels like we are going in the right direction by taking the time to optimize and polish what we have. We are constantly exploring different options to make Astride the best it can be and, while it unfortunately is taking a while, we believe the result will be worth it.

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